


And Then They Woke Up

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Daddy Kink, Dream Sex, Dreams, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity Gauntlet, M/M, Massage, Metaphorical Sex, Pegging, Psychic Abilities, Rare Pairings, Star Wars - Freeform, Strap-Ons, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Trans Male Character, daft punk - Freeform, dealing with grief, it was all a dream, or was it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 13:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8535751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: While on the run, Wanda begins to dream of a kind, impulsive man who cheers her up when she sleeps. A galaxy away, Peter has strange dreams as he travels back to Terra with an Infinity Stone.





	1. The Blasted Church

**Author's Note:**

> No beta reader. All mistakes my own. Please let me know if you find anything.
> 
> This is a work of love. Whoever you are, wherever you are right now, I hope it makes you feel better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daft Punk “Instant Crush”
> 
> Wanda has some bad memories. Peter has ways of coping.

Their parents were newly dead again and Wanda and Pietro were in the church in Sokovia that didn’t have a roof. That’s how Wanda knew it was a dream, because this had all been a very long time ago. 

In the way of dreams, though, she was simultaneously convinced it was the past and present. The rain of bombs had happened last week, blowing off the roof of the church like a window shade that wouldn’t be coming back down. But she was also in the present, asleep in Clint Barton’s family barn. The hay smelled fresh but was less comfortable to sleep on than the sleeping bag his wife provided her.

But while Real Wanda slept, Dream Wanda and her brother slept beneath the pews. She used her Barbie backpack as a pillow, which meant she sometimes woke up with a pink buckle digging into her cheek. Pietro offered her his Ninja Turtles hoodie but she didn’t want his head on the bare, cold floor. Also, his clothes smelled like sour milk, which is just how he smelled now that neither bathed.

They took turns going out to find food. Wanda didn’t know what one of them would do if some older children came to claim their hideout. Neither she nor Pietro had been taught how to fight.

At night, he told her he wanted to be the one to go outside. She could stay there. “You’re the girl,” he added.

She laughed at him. “I run as fast as you. What do they do to girls that they wouldn’t do to boys?”

His face went very blank and very careful. He pulled down the cuffs of his sleeves over black-purple bruises. They were always hurt all the time—without parents, their familiar city was now a place of broken glass and fallen pillars—so Wanda had noticed them, yes, but not thought much of them. Now she saw they were shaped like very large fingerprints.

“You’ve been beaten,” Wanda said.

He looked down. “I’ve been paid.”

She yelled at him, which was also strange. When she had realized he was being beaten and had in real life, she remembered she hadn’t said anything. Her brother’s attempt to survive was another sadness to heap on a pile of grief. Young, Dream Wanda was emboldened by regret.

“Why would you do that for us? For bread? You are worth more to me than food!”

“I do it because I love you,” he said, unabashed and more serious than he had ever been. In real life, they never said “I love you.” “I love you” was what you said when you thought you were going to die because an explosive was a few feet away from your head. It was one of many reasons adult Wanda never said “I love you.” It was death.

She watched him leave. 

Then she went to the statue of Mary at the front of the church. As she walked, Wanda grew from a child to the woman she was when she was awake.

The statue cried blood. Large, ruby streaks ran down over its face and garments 

It was all very obvious.

This was usually when she woke up. Instead, the dream kept going, her brother somewhere off being kicked, beaten, and whored. Wind hissed through the church which, now that she looked, really looked, appeared to be the one where she and her brother had met Ultron.

“Hey! Hey, lady!” 

She turned.

A tall man in a red leather jacket ran up behind her, affable and puppyish. “You know where we are?”

He was a stranger with an unshaven face, but he was a stranger in her dream. Of course she did not run from him. His jacket reminded her of Michael Jackson on the cover of Thriller, which she had listened to religiously when she turned five.

The man looked her up and down. “You okay?”

“No. My brother has gone away,” she said.  “Now I live in America and we can’t live together.”

The man looked around the church. “This is America?”

“No. It’s Sokovia.”

“Ha! Really? It looks like a war zone.” He squinted at the broken windows. Something about that made her think of Han Solo, cavalier and perhaps not quite as bright as he thought he was.

Wanda and her brother had always loved Star Wars. Between the ages of four and seven, their games of pretend had circled it. Together, she and Pietro had saved planets, used the Force on bored tom cats, and hung off the stairs in their apartment complex, yelling, “Luke, I am your father!”

“It is a war zone,” she said. “Most everyone I love is dead.”

“Oh. Oh jeez. That’s fucked up.”

“It is.” She didn’t say, ‘It’s all right. It was a long time ago.’ It was still happening outside. ”Sokovia has difficulties.”

“What do you have in Sokovia?” He looked around the church. “Besides burned out buildings?”

“Besides my home? Bazars, Euro night clubs, and churches much prettier than this one. There was an arcade when I was a girl with Pac-Man. My brother and I took turns.” 

He seemed interested by the last. “If we go and look for it, do you think we would find it?”

“I should pick through the ashes of my dead family and friends to find a toy?”

He looked awkward. “Sorry.”

“That seems very selfish to look for a Pac-Man.”

He hesitated. “It’s not the best consolation prize, but, see, everyone you loved is done. When nothing’s left, when no one’s around, you get to choose what to do.”

“You speak of being beholden to no one?”

“No connections or anything? There’s, like, a sort of freedom. Play Pac-Man? Do it. Read Captain America comics? Awesome. Bang every entity from here to Alderaan? Yup, cool. You’re free! We’re free.”

She laughed at him. She liked tall, naive men. “Alderaan? Are you a friend of Han Solo’s?”

He winked. “I like to think I would be.”

“Then instead of Pac-Man, I want to play Death Star. I want to fight Darth Vader with the Force, which is something I can do, now.” She had begun to conceptualize her powers that way and it helped her focus remarkably when she trained with Clint. That, and listening to pop music, but the latter was not as cool. Clint didn’t like her music.

The poor, dumb man was lost. “What do you mean?”

To demonstrate, she turned to look at the pew behind them. She pulled her arm back and pushed it forward through the air, making the pew fly backward into the others. It broke into pieces.

The man raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Cool, cool. Never met a girl who can do that.”

When he didn’t run, she happily took his hand. He seemed okay with this.

“When my brother and I were children, he always played Luke.” Wanda lead him to the church door. As she looked back at him, she expected him to transform into Han Solo for real or for her dream perception to shift to decide that’s just who he was. He remained the same, however. “We’ll find my brother. Maybe he won’t remember the fight we just had.”

“Sure. Death Star? Cute chick as Leia? I’m good with all these things.”  Then he came to a halt. He was so large, when he stopped, she couldn’t pull him forward. “Who’s that?”

Lying on the stairs of the church, arms and legs flung across the steps, was Pietro. He was dead. He was not the child version she had seen a few minutes ago but an adult riddled with bullet holes.

Wanda’s eyes stung. “No. I’ve changed the nightmare. It’s no longer awful. I decided. I can’t see him like this now. He has to be alive.”

“That’s our Luke?”

She knelt beside her fallen brother and even tried to smile. “Wake up, Pietro. It’s all right, now. We’re going to play Death Star like we used to. Come on.” 

Pietro continued to lie there, face white in death.

Wanda felt the weight of the man’s hand on her back. Then his body slid behind hers and he pulled her into a hug. He didn’t say anything.

***

Clint called the barn where Wanda slept “The Cat Barn.” The cats lived here together from the surrounding farms, bringing back dead bunnies and crickets, cuddling up to her as if she was a stray like them. Others—a Persian and a tabby—had made the tractor their regular bed.

Wanda, who liked cats, often became annoyed. They sometimes woke her up by meowing or rubbing their faces against her. They were under the distinct impression that she was there to personally feed them with the dry cat food Laura kept in bags from PetSmart.

She pet them anyway.

The hay was not comfortable. The sleeping bag she had in the loft was considerably better.

Her dream began to fade as she rubbed her eyes, surrounded by the smell of fur. She sneezed. It was still day outside, the barn full of a buttery light, which was unfortunate. She couldn’t use the outhouse unless it was dark and she could put on all her black clothes.

Laura brought her dinner, which was coffee and macaroni and cheese. Wanda hoped Laura’s smiles weren’t fake, that she wasn’t angry to be housing a fugitive besides her husband, but Wanda couldn’t be sure unless she dipped into her mind.

“Thank you.” Wanda took the plate. She suspected the bags under her own eyes made her look like a vampire. “You are so kind.”

“Of course.” Laura leaned down to pick hay out of her hair. 

For a moment, Wanda felt strange. This was the closest she had been with another human in weeks. She drew back from this pretty woman, her polished sweetness.

Laura was surprised. “Sorry. The kids always have stuff in their hair.”

“I understand.”

Laura seemed thoughtful. “Do you want to come in for dessert in a little bit? We have ice cream.”

Wanda thought of the kids. The youngest, Nathaniel Pietro Barton, was likely two, maybe three. Walking, certainly. Fragile. “Maybe another time.”

“Oh. Sure.” Laura wished her a good night and left.

Wanda began to eat her macaroni which, of all American Midwest mysteries, was served with ketchup. It didn’t taste bad, though she suspected that Laura’s motherliness did not make her a supreme chef.

She overheard Laura meet Clint as he headed toward the barn to check up on Wanda. They spoke in low voices, but not low enough.

“She seems okay,” Laura said. “Maybe depressed.”

Wanda didn’t think that was much of a secret. One of the cats curled up in her lap and tried to steal some macaroni from her plate. She pushed it away but it just purred.

“She shouldn’t be depressed,” said Clint. “She should be ready. Tony sure as hell knows where she is. How long do you think it will be before he changes his mind and tells General Ross?”

“He won’t,” said Laura. “Come on. You know he feels bad.”

“And you know what he did to her family.” His voice dropped, as if he finally realized she could hear them.

Wanda hurt to think of Tony Stark’s bomb—gutted and broken always, always, her parents, their blasted apartment—but the straight jacket in the prison was fresher. More painful.

Clint greeted her in good cheer. He brought a laptop, explained her connection was hard coded. “You do what you want, kid.”

Wanda waited for him to leave the barn. She was done with anger and fear; even her dreams were, it seemed. She put on music and and levitated herself up through the air. She listened in the dark barn to Daft Punk and the B52’s and the Electric Light Orchestra and the bands she and her brother once sang karaoke to. 

Ready? Ready be damned. She could afford some joy.

***

“Nap’s over.” Rocket smacked Peter’s thigh.

The roar of the Milano’s engine swam into Peter’s ears. He had that awful, scummy taste in his mouth he often got when he slept in the cockpit. He used to panic when he fell asleep at the wheel, but then he got a furry co-pilot with the ability to stay up for long periods of time.

Except, you know, when he had to sleep. “I’m exhausted,” Rocket said. 

“No shit. What’s it been, twelve hours?”

“You were out like the dead. Made me jealous.”

“Yeah? I was having a nightmare, sort of.” Peter thought of the Earth dream girl his brain had cooked up for him: pale and listless eyes. She looked a bit more wounded and had less tentacles than the ladies he met in dreams had, but who was he to speculate on his subconscious brain? She could have represented anything from survivors’ guilt to his love of Star Wars as a kid. Whatever. “You ever had one of those dreams you woke up from but wanted to go back and finish?”

“Everyone does.” Rocket stretched. “I try not to actually do it because I like to think I’m smarter than that.” 

“Oh man, I’m not.” Peter used to dream about Terra when he was with the Ravagers. When Yondu would wake him up, he’d always ask for a few more minutes. That was back before he decided, you know what? Screw Terra. That was ages ago, now.

“Try not to fall asleep here. Being a courier ain’t the most exciting, but you know.” Rocket got down from the chair and gave their cargo a kick.

“Hey! Hey! Don’t kick the Power Stone!” Peter literally broke out in a sweat.

“Relax, Quill. You act like my room ain’t stuffed full o’ bombs!”

“I like to pretend it isn’t, thanks.” Peter slipped into the pilot’s seat and buckled up. “Don’t give me a reason to not have to.”

Rocket laughed as he left.

Peter turned on his music. He began to sing along with the Jackson Five.


	2. The Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Electric Light Orchestra “Starlight”
> 
> Wanda and Peter play Star Wars. And "gardening."

Wanda and the man rushed through the Death Star. They were pursued by a storm trooper.

Wanda was in Leia’s white dress from the first film, complete with hood and gun. She even wore the buns on either side of her head, a look she had always adored. It was a dream, she reasoned, so she had nothing to be embarrassed about.

The man unabashedly played along and ran beside her. He wore Han Solo’s signature shirt and vest, both of which hugged his torso just wonderfully. 

“We need to get to the control room!” she yelled.

“Which one? This place is the size of a moon.”

“Isn’t there always just one?” They rounded a convenient corridor and hid. The storm trooper ran past, not even bothering to look. Which was convenient.

He scratched his head with the mouth of his pistol, which seemed like an unwise thing to do. “Well, yeah, but, like, this craft’s enormous. You want a control room per sector. Otherwise, I don’t know, wouldn’t you get rolling black-outs?”

Wanda had never considered that in her games regarding the Death Star as a child. She suspected it was why she didn’t make the best Avenger. “I suppose. Do you think there would be a master control room, though? To control the others?”

“Maybe? Think we can get to it through the ventilation system?”

Crawling through the vent was pretty fun, as it was a vent from a film and not a real one that Wanda suspected would have been awfully cramped. This was roomy. The man joked about getting stuck a few times and giggled--he giggled!--when she said that if they go hungry, they can eat the breakfast buns on her head.

The first room they dropped into was the master control room. Of course it was. It had a row of computer banks like a 1980’s spy film. Lights blinked on and off among tangles of red and blue wires.

“Aw, hell yeah! This looks super important!”

Wanda was proud.  “We are the best team!”

“High five for best team!” He raised his hand and she slapped it. “Low five for not getting caught and killed!” She slapped his hand then, too, and bumped his fist after for good measure, which caused him to giggle once more.

Someone pounded at the steel door to the room. “Open up! We know you’re in there!”

Wanda laughed. “Screw you, clone!”

“Clone?” The man looked confused.

“All the storm troopers are clones.” That had been one of the few things from the prequels Wanda had liked though her brother had, openly and irritably, hated. If this man was some sort of psychological stand-in for her brother--and, in many respects, he seemed to be just that, except for being extremely handsome--it made sense he wouldn’t know that.

“Oh.” He didn’t look any less confused. “Sure?”

“Okay, so what do we do, now?” Wanda looked at the computers. “Destroy everything?” She leaned over a shorter computer bank to see what was on the wall. When she got close, she realized it was an old-fashioned Pac-Man game, complete with a maze of white dots and the little, colorful ghosts.

“No idea! There’s a lot of things we could do.”

Wanda couldn’t hide her smile. Her dream man was a playboy, after all! Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw that his eyes had drifted to the back of her dress. She suspected he wasn’t looking at the seams. “‘Things’?”

He saw that she had noticed him looking and jumped.

It was adorable. He was adorable. “Why don’t you elaborate?” she said throatily.  
Wanda had long labored under the idea she was a Good Girl. As a Good Girl, she didn’t sleep with random men lightly or have strange sex. This was a dream, though.

Keeping eye contact, she hiked up her dress. Beneath was her white cotton underwear, the pair she had gone to bed wearing. She then pulled the pins out of her hair, letting it fall down over her neck and shoulders.

The guy’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Awesome! Okay!” He came to lean over her, his chest against her back.

If there was still a storm trooper at the door, he was gone. The dream was under her will, perhaps even the hardness she felt against her.

Wanda let out a sigh. It felt good to be desired like this. “I hope that’s not your gun!”

He kissed her ear. “It’s my other gun. We could play with that, too, though. Dream’s a dream.”

She burst out laughing. Taking one of his hands, she lay it on her breast. “Are you the pervert for suggesting it or me?”

He squeezed. “Both, I hope.”

Her nipple hardened under his fingers. She moaned.

His breath stirred her hair followed by that giggle, again. “This isn’t awkward for you, is it?”

She started and stood up straight. “A little, I suppose.” 

“Aah! No! No, no, no!” He was still hard. “We can totally keep going! This is fine! I like this. This is amazing!”

“Yes, but let’s do this elsewhere.” Wanda waved her hands and the black, hulking computers burst into bloom. Grass as green as toothpaste erupted beneath their feet. Their metal frames roughened into bark. The flowers that bloomed were each a soft pink, dusted gold along the edge but bruised purple in the center. 

He let out a long whistle. “We’re not in Kansas anymore. Or, uh, on the Death Star. Well, actually, are we on, like, the planet of Lisa Frank?”

She hadn’t thought about her Lisa Frank notebooks from school for years. The garden was indeed technicolor with loud, vibrant purples and blues. A marble platform the height of a bed pushed up through the ground and she went to sit on it. “I suppose so. It’s what an innocent girl would fantasize about, don’t you think? Making love as Snow White in the middle of a forest!” She stretched out.

He sat beside her. “That’s your fantasy?”

“Well, what’s yours?”

“As a kid? There was a teenage girl in the mall near my house. She was older than me and always there eating ice cream in the parking lot.” He took her hand in his and examined it, squeezing the knuckles as if to test how real she was.

Wanda raised an eyebrow. It was a strange thing for the man to say, certainly if he was a product of her unconscious. Sokovia had shops, yes, but a mall was a little too American for her home country, especially since they had been a Communist state for several, very long decades. Lisa Frank notebooks could be bought, but not from large malls.

She supposed her tastes in men had largely been informed by action movies and crushes on brave, silly boys with rebellious, American attitudes. Still, Wanda had never actually been inside an American mall. What she knew of them was informed by films.

She knew about ice cream, though. “What flavor?”

“Vanilla. It’d melt down the corners of her mouth, right? And end up on this red tank-top she wore.” He blushed as he rubbed her hand in little circles. Then he ran her fingers over his bearded face, pausing to lick one.

Wanda let out a sigh. His beard was scratchy, his tongue wet. “That’s a nice metaphor. White ice cream.”

He looked around at the blooming trees. “The garden a metaphor, too?”

Now she felt her face heat up. “Yes.”

“That so?” Raising an eyebrow, he ran his fingers over a flower hanging close to his face. Dew clung to the pink petals. “What’s this represent, then?”

She smiled and bit her lip. She was sheepish. “Me.”

He smiled, too, and pressed his mouth to the flower, drinking from it. 

Wanda felt her sex tighten. Subtext in a dream was text, really, and she felt his tongue heavy and hot between her legs. “Oh, you tease!”

He pressed his nose deeper into the blossom, one eye fastened on her.

She let out a soft cry and pushed her hips up.

He pressed into the flower more hurriedly, his hand running down her thigh.

“Oh God!” She shivered.

He pulled away from the flower, laughing. When she pulled out of the depths of her unexpected orgasm, she saw the flower had poured slickness over his face. He wiped away dew from his beard. “What’s your name?”

Wanda panted. “Scarlet Witch.”

He ran his fingers over his moustache. “Witch?”

“Wanda,” she said, dispensing with code names altogether.

“Wanda the Witch!” The man leaned close. She saw his erection still pushing against his clothes. “You a good witch or a bad witch, Wanda?”

Her nose touched his. “Very bad.”

He kissed her. His tongue was heavy and slick in her mouth, real in all the funny ways a kiss could be real.

***

“Whatever you’re dreaming, I recommend going back to your room.” Gamora’s voice was pleasant enough to wake up to but she sounded distressed.

Peter, for all of five seconds, felt pretty damn good as he looked around. Excited. Then he looked at his pants. Too excited. “Oh, Jesus.”

Gamora noted his embarrassment. “What is it you say? ‘Go have a hot shower’?”

He was miserable as he covered himself. “I’ll be back to take up my shift in a bit.”

“Take your time!” She turned up his music.

***

“Good mood?” Laura brought Wanda her breakfast again. This time, it was hashbrowns. The dusk sunlight from the barn’s window turned them gold.

Wanda took them and began eating immediately. She was ravenous. “The weather’s very nice, don’t you think?”

Laura looked unsure. “Getting stir crazy?”

“I was thinking of a walk during the evening. If it’s dark enough.”

“You should. The garden’s finally got some flowers in it.”

Wanda choked back her hashbrowns. Then she smiled, blushing. “I’ll look for them.”


	3. Star Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10cc “The Things We Do For Love”
> 
> Dinner for two.

Peter wheeled Wanda out of the golden elevator as she shrieked with laughter. The ninetieth floor of the Spinning Wheel was the same as the first eighty-nine tiered floors, all smooth, purple glass. The tables and chairs were stuffed with guests of a thousand different shapes and colors. The top floor was special, though, because it was closest to the domed ceiling of the space station. Above them, a nebula whirled.

All the chairs were on wheels, too. Spinning was kind of their thing, which made the entire dining hall basically a themed restaurant in Peter’s mind, like an intergalactic Chuck E Cheese, but it was the fanciest Chuck E. Cheese where he’d ever eaten.

He pushed Wanda the Witch up to the empty table. The Kree waiter clucked his tongue in distaste and then said, “Would madam and sir much like to sample the star wine?”

Wanda’s eyes were huge. “Star wine?” 

“Forget sampling!” Peter sat down and spread his legs like the goddamn king he was. “Bring us a bottle, man. Most expensive you got.”

The Kree waiter colored a deep sapphire. “Of course, sir.”

Peter fucking loved owning snobbish dudes. He didn’t want to be speciest, but man, it felt good when it happened to be a pissy Kree. Those chucklefucks could be obnoxious. Maybe it was dealing with Ronan, but their criminals were also pretty zealous. He certainly remembered seeing a Ravager forced to choke on an enemy Kree’s gun.

A diner at a table nearby who looked exactly like that Ravager began to choke. His date rushed to help him, wrapping his arms under his chest.

Easy, Peter cautioned himself. You’re new at this whole lucid dreaming thing. Don’t fuck it up.

The diner coughed out something that looked like a bone onto his plate.

Wanda looked up to watch a meteor pass by overhead. On Terra, he remembered calling them shooting stars. 

“I’ve never seen constellations like these,” said Wanda the Witch.

“Yeah? Sector Jeehum. I ate here when Nova Prime honored my crew for saving Xandar.”

Her large, doll eyes rolled and she laughed. “A true galaxy hero!”

Peter flushed happily.

The server brought the wine, which was purple with whirls of silver, and poured it with sort of a French-waiter-in-a-cartoon flourish into their conical glasses. “Enjoy,” he said stiffly.

“Are they made from real stars?” Wanda asked, delighted.

It was a weird question, he thought, but then he was like, Oh yeah, she’s supposed to be from Earth. Sexy Earth bad girl force witch. “That’s just a name. They’re from distilleries on meteor mines.”

Wanda was fascinated. God, she was cute. “What does it taste like?”

“Try it for yourself.”

She did. Then she reeled in surprise. “It’s like soda! But not that sweet.”

“Not anything like that on Earth, huh?” He tried his best dashing smile, sitting side straddle in a chair that wasn’t really built for anyone to sit like that.

“Like vodka, perhaps?” Wanda looked baffled.

Peter laughed.

“I didn’t think we would have a real live date.” She tilted her glass back and forth and made the liquid inside spin. It shined neon when she did. “I thought we would just go back to fucking.”

A couple of the dinner guests who populated Peter’s unconscious turned to look at them.

Peter dropped his voice and adjusted in his seat. “Oh yeah, no, that’s totally awesome! But I thought maybe we can do this, too?”

She smiled. “So bashful!”

He dug that. 

He smiled, too, and watched as she removed her jacket. He stopped smiling when he saw her bright, blood red tank top. Her nipples were firm as pencil erasers against the fabric.

“I was thinking of ordering ice cream,” she said. “What do you think?”

He looked aroung them. “I don’t know if they serve it here?”

The Kree waiter returned holding an ice cream cone. “For you, madam.”

She took it graciously. “Why, thank you.”

He swept away, because, yeah, dream. Of course she didn’t need to tell him.

Wanda examined the cone critically. “Sokovia has much better ice cream than the United States, but this will do.” She licked the top.

Peter felt that tongue on his junk and shuddered at once, eyes sealing shut.

As he feared, when he cracked open one eye, another restaurant-goer looked their way.

She followed his gaze. “I would not worry about anyone else here. They don’t matter.” She licked again.

Peter panted. “They don’t, but, like, we’ll still get caught, maybe?”

Wanda clucked her tongue. “How terrible! Public indecency!”  The ice cream was quickly melting down the side of the cone, as if it were July instead of the temperature-controlled climate inside the station, and she licked up the drops. One landed on her shirt.

“Christ.” He was so hard and the warmth of her tongue was real and hot and a phantom on his cock.

“It’s less sugary than I thought it would be.”  She paused for a particularly devastating suck. “A bit salty, even.”

Peter was breathless. “That must taste weird.”

“It tastes good.” She kept her eyes locked with his.

“Do you want me to be inside you? For real?”

“Yes. Real.” She smiled and kept licking.

Still, Peter felt sheepish, so of course Nova Prime came up to the table. “Peter! Who is our Star-Lord’s guest?”

He stared at her in horror.

Wanda just licked her ice cream. “Wanda. Charmed.”

“You’re not an ambassador from Terra, are you?” Peter’s version of Nova Prime had a school principal’s eyebrow arch. She looked like she knew something was up and it wasn’t older kids smoking in the boy’s room.

Slurping her ice cream, Wanda didn’t look at Peter. “What is Terra?”

Peter was folded over himself on the table. God, he didn’t want Nova Prime to see his boner. This dream-logic sex was disorienting as fuck. “She, uh, she means Earth.”

Wanda burst out laughing. This spilled more drops of ice cream onto her breasts. “I wouldn’t be a very good representative. Thank you for thinking so.”

Nova Prime saw those drops and noted Peter’s position. She gave them a thin smile. “Of course.” Then, like the Kree waiter, she went away.

“I’m going to die.” Peter put his head in his arms.

“You’re cute,” said Wanda. “Peter the Star-Lord?”

“Star-Lord. Or Peter.” Then he felt teeth graze his dick.

He looked up to see Wanda drag her tongue along the shaft of the cone. “You can say ‘yes,’ ‘no’--it doesn’t matter. We can do anything you like.”

“You.” He wanted her so bad. “I want to do you.”

Her smirk was evil. Of course he came.

At the same time, the vanilla spilled right down her chin. 

“Do what?” said Drax.

Peter was horrified to see him standing in the middle of the tables. The station ran like a watercolor painting.

Wanda made a strange choking sound as vanilla slid between her fingers. “Who’s your friend? Does he want ice cream, too?”

***

She found herself on the Barton living room couch, waking up as Clint laughed. “Ice cream?”

Wanda’s head was full of cotton. The track lighting was too bright so she rubbed her eyes. “What?”

“You fell asleep, kid.” Clint gave her the sweetest, most paternal smile. “You were chatting a bit.”

Her face heated up. She prayed he thought she was lusting for dessert only. Outside, it was black. The window was a square of pitch. “What time is it?”

“Three in the morning, maybe? I don’t know. I slept, like, two hours. I was on the phone with Steve. Time difference.”

“I am sorry to disturb you.”

“I’m not!” He was still grinning. “I was going to make myself some pancakes and throw some in for the fridge tomorrow. Want some? It’s not ice cream, but, you know.”

The dream receded and Wanda said, yes, she loved buttermilk pancakes. Blueberry was fine, too. He put on an apron with small, yellow ducks. Wanda thought it was funny. “When did you learn how to cook?”

“Pancakes are easy.”

“I am a bad cook. I burn everything.” She hesitated. “My brother cooked.”

“Yeah? Was Pietro any good?”

“Wonderful!” She described breakfasts with Pietro, usually sweet rolls, egg, and jam. His dinners were far more grand. “When we got off the street, it was so good to live in an apartment again! And with a kitchen! We were sixteen and then suddenly, whoosh! A roof again! A real gas stove!”

“Were you both working at the time?”

“We did so many jobs! I was a secretary, a waitress, and a cleaning lady. Oh! And we entered karaoke contests for money.”

Now Clint just looked confused.

“The bar we lived over ran competitions with cash prizes.” Pietro pretended to be Freddie Mercury, Donny Osmond, Sting, all of them. She had always been up there with him, even attempted Shania Twain herself one night and walked home proudly, drunkenly with second place.

“Sounds fun.”

“It was better than stealing.” 

He didn’t seem very interested in judging her. “Jewelry and wallets?”

“Credit cards, mostly. We ran scams, tried to only steal from the rich.” She folded herself small on the couch. “I know Pietro took some jewelry and things from johns.”

Clint looked up.

Wanda knew she had said too much. Stealing was one thing, but prostitution was another. “I tried to get him to stop. I did. He never wanted me to do anything like that. He was an idiot who always insisted he was protecting me.”

Clint slid a blueberry pancake off the skillet. “Listen. He wouldn’t be the first Avenger to, uh. Hustle to make ends meet.”

“The Black Widow’s seductions were all business.”

“Nat? No!” Clint couldn’t meet her eyes. “I had some lean years when I was young. Don’t worry about it.”

Wanda stared. “Does Laura know?”

“Yeah. She knows I had it rough before and after the circus.” He clucked his tongue and handed her a plate. “I was tenacious, but I stopped, aged out.”

“I am sorry you had to do that.”

“I don’t need to tell you people do what they need to survive. Anyway, it was a long time ago.” 

“Yes, but it still happened.”

“You own what happens to you, kid.”

They looked at each other and there was a warmth in the room.

“At dawn, I’m headed to the firing range,” he said. “Want to join?”

“I can use my powers, maybe?” She felt silly asking permission, but she was in hiding. She knew they had to be careful.

“I was counting on it.”

They talked and she didn’t realize the sun had risen until she saw the light touch the windowpane.

Laura joined them. She sent Clint off to wake up the kids and looked relieved Wanda had come in from the barn. “Any buttermilk left?”

When Wanda went to join Clint, the name, “Peter, Star-Lord” came back into her head. Where had she gotten that from? She would have searched it online, but Clint’s farm was off the grid in every way that mattered. That’s why it was the perfect place to hide.

***

“Do what?” said Drax.

Peter sat up in bed, squinting as Drax stood over him. “Holy shit!”

Drax frowned. “Holy what?”

“How loud was I talking in my sleep?”

“Not loud. You left your door open. I tried to close it.”

“But I was talking?”

Drax looked uneasy. “In a sense, yes. You appeared to be having a dream.”

“Oh.”

“A sex dream.”

Peter remembered living with the Ravagers, crowded in together like ants to sleep in close quarters. People groaned, moaned, fucked, and masturbated out in the open all the time. It was no big thing, unless Yondu was in a mood to shove a foot up someone’s ass about it. Still, it didn’t help. 

Peter’s face was hot with shame. Oh God. He wanted to die. “Someone in my dream. That’s all.”

“Not someone real?”

“No.”

“Because if it’s me, Peter, I’m afraid I do not have that preference for men.”

“No, it’s not, you, buddy.”

“I know you have been with men.”

“Yeah.”

“And have enjoyed yourself.”

“Um, yeah.”

“Loudly.”

“Yes, thanks.”

“When you bring them back to the ship and Gamora and myself pretend not to hear.”

“Okay, yes, great! Thank you!”

“Are you thanking me because you appreciate that I have heard your late night sexual activities or because you wish me to shut up and leave you alone?”

“The last one.”

“Very well. Good night, Peter.” Drax left.

Peter sighed. Under the sheets, he saw he had grown hard. 

Again.

Wow.

He jacked off, thinking of ice cream and the woman’s lips. Even now, her exact face had faded from his mind.


	4. Massage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Susanne Sundfør “Delirious”
> 
> Peter wants to prove to Wanda he's the best at massages and somewhat succeeds. Wanda wants to prove to Peter she's not a pervert and somewhat fails.

Wanda lay on her stomach in a golden bedroom as hot as a sauna. Despite this, she wore her jacket, her boots, everything. She was trying to read the iPad screen in front of her, but the words kept shifting under her eyes. No sentence was the same when she re-read it.

It had a message for her from Vision. She needed to know what he wanted from her.

Peter walked in the door. He looked back from where he had come and then to the bed again. He held a gun with him.

It was like no gun Wanda had seen. A space blaster, perhaps, but it made her sit up at once. “And who are you planning to shoot with that?”

“The thug who’s chasing me, I guess?” There he was again, all rambling Han Solo. “Was chasing me?”

“What sort of thug?” She stayed on her knees, the screen forgotten.

“Guy who wanted money? I kind of took it from him to begin with, so. You know.”

She started to get out of bed, laughing. “Yes, I do know about being chased. It is so very stressful!”

“Wait! No, hey. Stop. He might come back. You can totally stay there, if you want.”

She smirked. “Can I, then?”

He put his gun in his holster slowly, biting his lip. “Maybe I can join you?”

The sight of him putting it away, the bald implication. Mmm. “I’m afraid to say I’m a bit tense.” The room really was hot. She peeled off her jacket.

“I can help with that.” There was a nightstand. He opened the top drawer, revealing a glass bottle of oil. “Hey, do you like massages?” When he looked up at her, his eyes were bright.

Wanda rolled back onto her stomach. “I’ve never had one before.”

“You sure haven’t. Because I’ve never given you one.”

She rolled her eyes but liked his confidence, his warmth. She kicked her legs. “Should I stay like this?”

He pocketed the oil. “Not a bad start, right?”

She assumed he would straddle her, but no, he actually went in for a massage like an appropriate Barbie dream date boyfriend. He squeezed her back and her shoulders, compressed her tightly wound muscles. 

Wanda began to feel herself unspooling. She laughed when he ran his hands down her thigh, her leg—ticklish, yes. Then he stopped to squeeze her foot. When he removed the boot and drew the sock off after it, he pressed a kiss to her heel.

“Mm. That’s nice. Am I Cinderella?”

“Who?” 

She laughed. Of course he wouldn’t know about fairy tales. “Keep going.”

After pulling off the other boot, he rubbed the foot accordingly. Then he leaned over and fumbled with her bra for a sweetly long time, each hook undone with a laugh on his part.

She laughed, too, delighted when cold air caught her skin.

With the bra free, he let her shirt drop over her bare breasts and back. The sensation of material over her nipples was nice, but what was even nicer was his hands pushing back under her shirt, kneading her back muscles.

She sighed.

“Too tense, too tense.” He clucked his tongue and straddled her, at last. She could feel his hardened cock through his pants, baring down against the small of her back.

Wanda moaned, pushing back into the touch. “I want you,” she said.

“You want me?” He chuckled and it was a little sad. “You’re made up of everything I want.”

A strange thing to say. “How so?”

“You’re pretty, you’re a little weird—in a good way”—he ran his thumbs in circles beneath her shoulder blades—“like, weird the way I am. Sort of alone.”

Wanda’s heart hurt. She wondered if it wasn’t just her unconscious that had constructed Peter, intergalactic hero, awkward combination of all her fantasy men and, yes, incestuously, subconsciously, her brother. He often seemed sentient. 

Perhaps her powers had made a separate consciousness inside of herself. The thought made her feel strange, because if he was her creation, wasn’t she his mother?

“Wow,” he said. “You just tensed up all at once. Something I said?”

“We are not alone, not if the two of us exist together,” she tried, carefully.

Peter gave a low whistle. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but, well, one of us doesn’t exist at all.”

She relaxed all at once. He knew he wasn’t real. Or rather, her mind knew he wasn’t real so it informed her, through his mouth, what she already knew. This was all happening between her ears. “That’s a relief!”

He laughed again, harder than before. “Yeah, I hear ya. Existing is awful.”

“Yes. Loneliness is inherent to it.”

“People get all funny when they’re lonely.” He bent down and kissed her head.

Wanda stretched out further beneath him. “Mm. I agree.”

He reached under her shirt and cupped her bare breasts. His fingers ghosted over her nipples, which were already hard. He squeezed them.

She grunted. “More.”

Peter pinched them and pulled.

Wanda rolled her hips. “Fuck me.”

“You want it,” he said, peeling her shirt over her head. 

Her consent was a throaty moan. “Have me.”

“I already have you.” He pulled away, taking the pressure of his cock with him, and seemed to undress behind her.

But no, he had reached down and up her skirt. He pulled down her underwear, her buttocks and pussy exposed. He ran his fingers along both and she made a sound from the gut. “Yes. Claim me.”

“Fuck.” He didn’t remove her skirt, only pushed it up. “Look how wet you are. I could take you like this.”

She ached for it. “Please. Take off your clothes. Let me feel your skin.”

“Oh, babe. Of course.” She could hear him shuck off his clothes, the sigh of his jacket and shirt against each other. The jingle of his belt buckle against the zipper.

She felt a warm wetness spread across her back and jumped.

“Oil,” he told her. It was a whisper.

It slid down her shoulders and neck, onto the bed sheets. She didn’t care. He rubbed it along her skin, and when he climbed onto her back again, she could feel the muscle of his thighs, his bare hardness.

It didn’t matter that this wasn’t real. It was real enough.

He worked along her spine—“Oh fuck, you’re so hot”—and squeezed her breasts again—“God damn.”

To her brief displeasure, he dismounted from squeezing her lower back with his legs. It was only to roll down her skirt, however, and run his hands along her ass. He let his fingers graze the lips of her pussy and she gave a full body shudder.

“Stop,” she said. “You’re teasing me!”

“I love your body,” he said.

She arched her back. “Please.”

“Beg.”

A pause. She looked back over her shoulder and saw his face as surprised as hers. His chest was dusted in hair. His cock was hard and appropriately large but not frighteningly enormous the way they often were in porn films. It stood up straight, the head flushed.

She pinned him under her gaze. “Please, Peter.”

“Please what?” He saw where she looked and ran his hand down his cock.

“Please fuck me.”

He fell on her, turning her over to face him. His hands were on her breasts again, continuing the pretext of the massage.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. Her skin shined in the warm, liquid light of the room’s lone lamp. So did his from where the oil had made contact.

They kissed. It was warm. Good.

“I love your breasts,” was all he managed.

She snorted. “They aren’t very special! They are breasts.”

“They’re perfect,” he informed her. “Right shape. Right size.”

She grunted, pushing her hips upward. “Please, Peter?”

He winked, took his cock in hand, and ran the head over the entrance to her pussy. It made a wet sound. He panted but didn’t put it in.

“Please, Star-Lord?”

He let out a soft whine and finally thrust inside her. 

She felt full all at once. Wanda cried out.

He pushed in slowly, his eyes rolling back. He was in deep concentration, looking wounded.

She adjusted to the pressure, the solid weight of his cock inside her, breaching further inside her tight passage. “Faster?”

He shook his head quickly, sweat dripping from his forehead. “Wanda, I’m so turned on right now, I’m going to come inside you way too fast.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

He laughed. “It does! It does.” He groaned, his eyes closing. 

She begged as he pumped in and out in long, aching thrusts. Inside, she was warm, needy. Every last bit of shame seemed to evaporate. “Please, Daddy!”

He stopped. His eyes flew open.

Wanda covered her mouth. 

She was being disgusting and her dream lover, being a product of her own mind, would tell her so shortly. “I’m sorry! That’s—you didn’t hear that!”

His eyes darkened. “I didn’t?”

“No!” She felt sick with herself.

“What didn’t I hear?”

She squinted at him.

He had a small smile on his face. “Tell me. What didn’t I hear? Say it again.”

Her queasiness evaporated. She was curious, now. “Daddy?”

Peter thrust into her with a punishing snap of his hips. He tilted her waist up, grabbed her legs in either hand, and began to impale her.

Wanda released his neck and fell back. She grabbed the sheets and moaned.

“You want to be had, right?” He sounded out of breath, burning from the inside out. “You want someone to empty you out and fuck you?”

She moaned. “Yes!”

“You…want…my…cock.” He punctuated each word by pushing further inside her. “You need it.”

“Yes!” She nearly wept. “I need you!”

“You know what else you need?” He paused, ghosting his fingers over her ass.

“Spanking--?”

“No.” He paused his brutal thrusting and pulled out his cock, wet with her cum. “What could I want?”

Wanda knew the English word! She had watched some online erotica, but most of it was dull with bored looking men and women who didn’t seem particularly interested in being fucked. 

Which Wanda, at this moment, could not relate to. She wanted this strange, imaginary man any way he would have her. She was lonely for him. Needed it.

The word hit her. “Anal?”

He huffed out a breath. “Yes.” Then he kissed her again.

There was a burn at first as he pressed a finger inside her rectum. Wanda keened and he whispered it would be fine, he would go slow. 

“Yes, please! Slow.”

“Yeah. Real slow.”

She watched him pour out the rest of his oil on his cock. The bed was so very messy, now.

Then he pressed into her entrance, and oh, he was smooth. Gentle. It wasn’t the rhythmic pounding of his cock in her womanhood. No, this was gradual. Once she relaxed, his cock was fully seated inside her.

His breathing was heavy. “Thank you. Oh God.”

“You’re welcome, Daddy.”

He giggled. He genuinely giggled. He thrust once or twice inside her, moaning.

“Come inside me,” she said. “Give me all of it.”

“You want it?”

“Uh huh!”

“You want some cream inside your tight, cute ass?”

“Yeah!”

“You want what Daddy has to give you?”

She moaned.

He pulled out just enough to leave his cockhead inside. When he came, she could feel some of the warmth inside her, but it was his face, blissful, eyes screwed up tight, mouth open, that was beautiful.

He pulled out the rest of the way, leaving his come trailing from her hole.

“That was so good!” She realized how much she had sweat, feeling the wetness run from her forehead into her mouth.

He collapsed beside her. “Oh, fuck. I needed that. Daddy and all.”

She turned red. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“It’s gross, isn’t it?”

He looked at her strangely. “It’s a game. I like games. Why do you need to apologize?”

“You’re not my father. I have no lustful thoughts in that direction.” She reached over and tweaked one of his nipples.

He grunted when she did that. “How about next time I play someone else?”

Wanda sat up, everything below the waist aching pleasantly. “Like a thief who has broken into my house?”

“Maybe?”

“Or! Or we can be in an arranged marriage. You could be my mean, cruel lord husband who has forced me to marry you.” She imagined him tying her wrists to the bed board with silk and it stirred something inside her. The play violence felt sexy, fun.

Now he looked uncomfortable, but he said, “I could do a little of that, sure.”

She examined his hesitance, running her hand over his forehead. He smiled when she did and Wanda pushed her fingers back through his hair. He sighed.

She had a thought.

“How about you’re forced to marry me?”

“I said I’d already try it.”

“No,” she said. “What if I’m an evil, sexy, super villain? And you must please me or perish?”

He brightened. “I could get behind that.”

“You want me to have you?”

He nodded quickly.

“Want to start now?”

He nodded even more quickly.

“I want you to devour me.”

He shuddered. It was not from disgust it seemed. “Fuck yes,” he said. The come leaked out of her and he eyed it—her—everything—hungrily.

***

Peter woke up, mouth open to taste a woman who wasn’t there. This time, he was alone on the bridge, the auto-pilot on after he had fallen asleep. He could feel the uncomfortable stickiness in the crotch of his underwear.

He couldn’t do this anymore. 

He re-routed the Milano for an early rest stop at a space station notorious for its clean decks, hygienic wait staff, and filthy, multi-species brothel.

The crew would understand, he told himself. They had to. “The dream woman problem” was mentioned in passing during their last roommate meeting, but took a back seat to how the chore wheel should be re-set.

Brothels gave massages. Rather than give one, he could get one.

***

Wanda was awoken by a cat crawling over her face. It was a soft sensation, but a genuinely shocking one, so she pushed the cat away.

It yowled in anger. She apologized.

“I’m sure it did not mind.” Vision stood beside the tractor. He went to the cat and scratched its head, which mostly left the poor creature confused. “And I hope you don’t mind I phased through the wall?”

Wanda hurried to pick hay out of her hair. It always seemed to get in her pillow case, too. “Did Clint see you?”

“He did not.” Vision’s smile was brief. “I am not here at all, officially. I am not checking to make sure you are all right. I am not waking you up from a nap to say hello.”

“And Tony Stark will not know you have been here?” She let the acid she tasted in her throat drip into her words.

Vision looked surprised. “Of course not. I would not wish to betray your trust.”

Wanda felt that strange ache for him she had in the Avengers facility, the kind that hadn’t gone away when he became her minder. Well, her jailer.

Who had just traveled many miles and phased through a wall to find her.

“Why don’t you go outside while I get dressed?” she suggested quickly.

“Of course.” He left with one of the cats following him.

Regardless of their situation before, Wanda realized that she wanted him. Or wanted something about him. She wanted someone, maybe. It was a relief to be able to speak to him and not be afraid.

When she was ready, he came back in, holding the cat. 

She tried to be a bit sultrier and lowered her voice. “I have not seen many people, you know.”

“I hope the Bartons have been hospitable to you.”

“They have! They really have,” she said.

“Especially because you will be moving soon.”

“What?”

“I found you terribly easily. Don’t you think someone else will, as well? You ought to be leaving Clint and his family.” He handed the cat back to her.

Her entire body cringed. She wanted to throw up. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“You should. Don’t you wish to be safe?”

She heard it in his voice. The fatherly concern. He was trying to be her dad.

“And you do not wish for Clint to be hurt?”

“No,” she said.

“It would be good, then, to remove the burden.” He smiled. “I have already made arrangements. You can tell them you’re leaving.” He went on to describe to her a man capable of bending time and reality who had a large house in New York and a spare room to keep all her things.

She did not have any things in the barn. Nothing, actually. Mostly, she just felt small.


	5. There Was a Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arcade Fire “Sprawl II”
> 
> Peter and Wanda try to run away together.

So unlike an aaskavarian, a tentacle beast was mostly just tentacles. Peter, in the brothel, was half asleep and twined around one of them. The only arms his guy had were alive with slime and slickly coiled. His eyes were black, wet, and wise.

When Wanda came to him, her eyes were wet, too.

He pulled his mouth off one of the largest tentacles, feeling it slide out of his throat with a satisfying squelch. He didn’t have to just breathe through his nose, now. “What’s wrong, babe?”

Wanda the Witch stood there, and if she was freaked out about the tentacle beast regarding them, she didn’t show it. No, she seemed more intent. “Peter.”

“Yes?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Let’s make love.”

At first, he thought she wanted him to climb out of the tentacle monster’s thorough but lazy touch. He was barely undressed, jacket unzipped and fly open. But no, she got in right there with him.

Her mouth was fierce and all teeth. Hot. Searing, even, as she pushed his jacket the rest of the way off his shoulders and took the lead. Her touch was forceful. It was sexy as fuck.

He felt a tentacle work its way into the waistline of his pants, creeping along his ass, while she balled up the front of his shirt. She tried to tear it off him. The neckline caught on his hair, though.

“Hold on there.” He smoothed his shirt back down and flattened his hair. “You going to eat me alive?”

Her expression was dark. “I would like to. Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“I want to take carnal pleasure with you. That is my goal.”

The tentacle eased its way along his crack. He shuddered at the cold, wet touch. “You want this?”

“The tentacles?”

“Yes.”

“I do.”

He grunted.

“What is it?” She looked in the beast’s black eyes.

“He,” said Peter with a wink toward the tentacle beast, “is who I’m fucking tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“You want a demonstration?”

“I do.”

“I think I can arrange that.” He pulled his shirt over his head, making sure to pause so she could see his abs.

Her gaze was intense, dark, silent, like she was a doll. “Slowly,” she said.

He did as he was told, letting one of the tentacles run up and down his pant leg as he pulled them down. Another tentacle helped him with his underwear.

Yet another ran along the side of his face, a gentle, lover’s touch, and slid into his open, waiting mouth.

Wanda watched. Her breathing grew heavy.

The other tentacle, wet and warm, worked its way inside Peter’s hole, probing. It left him whole, flushed.

“You’re all red,” said Wanda.

Her velvet voice sounded almost as good as this felt. He took his mouth away from where it was sucking. “Come here. You can get all red, too.”

She had that same, dark stare as she unbuttoned her shirt. She flinched when one of the tentacles massaged a bare breast.

It paused.

So did she. “Peter?”

“Yeah?” He felt slime on his chin.

“How much do you like me?”

“A lot.” He watched as she ran her hand along the length of the tentacle. Like it was a cock as hard as his own.

He jerked his hips and another tentacle wrapped itself around his own dick. Pulled.

“Oh? And what do you like about me?” She gripped the tentacle tightly.

Scary, Peter thought. But still hot. “That you’re a little crazy and you’re cute and--”

“Would you ever ask me to leave?” Her fist stilled.

“What?” He looked at her, watching her vibrate. Shake. “Why would I ever ask that?”

Tears leaked from her eyes. 

“Babe? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said as she snapped the tentacle off.

Peter tried to focus on the fact that this was a dream. These were all dreams. And in them, Wanda had told him—shown him—she had power.

The shirt hanging open, she stripped off her skirt and panties. The tentacle in her palm bent and moved, growing wet at the end as if with pre-come.

As the tentacle inside him pressed deeper inside Peter, fucking him more fully, he watched Wanda rub her bare clit. “Nothing is wrong,” she said as she pressed the end of the tentacle to her pussy. It adhered to her labial lips, pressing inward.

The end of the tentacle left out in the air hardened, growing into a cock.

“Oh fuck,” said Peter.

“Yes, that is what I will be doing.” Her face was stone as she walked to him, shirt swinging in front of her hardened nipples.

He panted as the tentacle inside him eased its way out. It was wet as it pulled from his ass and he was so empty without it.

“You want this?”

Peter looked at the green pulsing cock. Then he looked up at her. “Please.”

“Please?” She gave him a small smile, the first smile he had seen on her this evening. “Like, ‘please, Daddy?’”

He grinned. “Please, Daddy.”

“Very good.” She touched the head of the cock to his hole.

He whined. “Please, babe. Please don’t tease.”

She laughed but she did not press inside him.

The tentacles became bindings, holding him in place, winding around his cock a little more tightly. Choking it.

“Please.” He grunted. “I need it.”

“What do you need?”

“To be fucked.” He was quivering, now. “By you. I need to be fucked by you. I need you.”

She kissed him, and as she did so, she pushed inside his body.

It was enormous. It was firm and good.

The tentacles on him writhed in what he assumed was a shared pleasure. It was all pleasure, right now, Wanda heaving and her eyes screwed shut.

“Oh.” Peter felt the wetness clinging to her face as he brushed a hand along her cheek. “You’re so good. I love this.”

She jerked her hips, began to thrust quickly inside him. “The cock. It’s pushing inside me, too.”

“Ah. Fuck.”

“I love this, too. I want you, Peter.”

“Even this?” Now he was getting weepy, because here was a woman willing to love his pervert self.

“Of course. I want it all.”

And something strange was happening, because the tentacles now had light moving along them. Like track lighting along the legs of soft, white jellyfish.

He watched Wanda as she came, the tensing between her eyebrows and then the relief. But she kept pushing inside him, kept thrusting. 

When he came, it was over the tentacles wrapped around his dick.

She kissed him again and said, “I’m moving to the city.”

And he said, “Let me come with you.”

So they left the tentacle beast and went.

They lived in a factory in the Bronx that had been converted into housing. Gamora, Rocket, Groot, and Drax lived on different floors, training, yelling, and stealing each other’s food.

Wanda and Peter shared a bedroom, a bed. She left her clothes on the floor the most, so she did the laundry. He ate food everywhere, every room, usually without a plate, so he was in charge of vacuuming and sweeping. They both cleaned the windows and paid the bills.

She picked up odd jobs: dog walking, street fortune teller, and bar tender on the weekends. For a while, he tried to tell her he was doing the same thing, but really he and the Guardians were smuggling goods from Terra out to Andromeda and back again. 

When Wanda caught on, she was mad, but only because he didn’t tell her. After he spent half a week sleeping on their ratty couch, she crawled in next to him and said, “Let me help,” and they kissed, her feet cold against his legs.

She came with them on missions after that.

Yondu showed up once in a while to fall asleep, drunk, on that very same couch. When he threatened to beat Peter up, Wanda used her Force powers and threw him right out of their home. Literally. He didn’t do it again and Wanda didn’t talk to him when he dropped by. When Yondu suggested he help them with smuggling, she politely but firmly said no, and he took care to never bring it up again.

Her favorite thing was to take Peter to a karaoke restaurant in the neighborhood. In front of a room full of drunk people, they sang. They weren’t bad. Sometimes, he walked out with a prize, usually a gift card for a Chinese restaurant.

His years in space made him forget how good Chinese food was.

On Fridays, she bought home books from the stores nearby, fresh bread to make French toast, and beer. He brought home flowers to put in the vase by the door. Just because it felt right.

She talked a lot about her brother when she drank. Over and over, she told Peter how well they would have gotten along. “Like a house on fire,” she said, a saying he had never heard before and made a note never to mention to Drax.

He didn’t drink anymore. He thought about starting again but decided against it. The occasional pot from their dealing neighbor was enough, along with hallucinogenic dust from Xandar used in local brothels.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I’d start talking about my mom,” he said. “I’d never stop, probably.”

“You could talk about her. I would not mind!”

“You’re supposed to say that.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. You’re my girlfriend, right?”

She smiled. “I am. Yes.”

It wasn’t always perfect. She literally cut her nails in bed. In bed! Who does that? She also stole his clothes when she was too tired to get her own even if he planned on wearing them that day.

And she got weird when he left the radio on all the time to scare off burglars when they weren’t home. Or when he used her toothbrush without asking.

But she also helped him out this one time he was caught by Terran federal agents by using her weird, Vulcan mind meld powers. She didn’t even get mad at him for either doing the bad thing (stealing car parts off a parked car) or getting caught for it. She just honestly trusted Peter more than the police, wanted to protect him more than she wanted to follow the law.

She liked him. Really, goddamn liked him. She told him how good his shirts smell (as she stole them), she left the bathroom door open so he could slip into showers with her, she used toys on him that made him melt, she always looked so happy to see those flowers, and she always kissed him good morning. Always, even if they had had a fight the night before.

One day, they were sitting on the couch, her bare legs folded next to his, and she said, “I wish this was real.”

“It is,” he said.

“Really real.”

And he could feel it. He could feel things begin to collapse around them--time, space, the room, their kitchen with the bright red electric tea kettle beginning to steam, the polka-dot microwave with popcorn in it. Everything was breaking down.

“Oh,” he said. “Right.”

And the dream went dark.

***

“You fell asleep for a second,” Clint said.

Wanda awoke with her face in the hay, her mouth tasting terrible. She tried to remember why she was in the barn and how long she had been here. “I need to go back to my apartment.”

Clint snorted. “What?”

The vision evaporated and Wanda immediately felt the emptiness of it, the way a beautiful place and life in the city fell into nothing. “Never mind.”

“He should be here in a second.” He looked toward the door. “Ready to go, kid?”

“I am ready to go to New York, I suppose.” She could see Peter’s face more clearly in her mind than ever before. She missed him, which was so strange, but she knew exactly why. He was everything she didn’t have.

Light vibrated in front of them. A circle ripped itself into existence, revealing the interior of a building that was very much not a barn.

“Oh God damn it!” Clint reached for his bow and arrows. “Not magic. Come on!”

“No,” said a man’s impatient voice. “You ‘come on.’”

Clint lowered his bow. “Me?”

“Good lord.” A man appeared at the portal’s mouth. He had on a red cape. “The witch. Come with me.”

Wanda stood. Vision had warned her of this man’s powers.

From the antiques in very clean, glass cases behind him, she suspected this would not be the warmly domestic apartment she dreamed of.

“Wanda,” Clint began.

“Thank you for everything. Tell your family they are lovely and kind.” She interrupted him with a quick hug and turned to the portal. She refused to look back. She wasn’t crying, but she knew her face would not hide how upset she was.

Going through the portal produced a warm, tingly sensation along her skin, like she was being scrubbed with very small brushes. This comfort disappeared quickly when she saw the man’s chilly face.

“I am Doctor Strange,” he said, not at all seizing on the fact his name was terribly funny. “While here, you will go near none of the windows. I’m hiding you at great personal risk.”

“I’m Wanda and it’s very nice to meet you, too.” When she smiled, she made sure to show all of her teeth.

He massaged his temples. “Yes, a great start, of course. Listen, I cleared out a storage closet for your room.”

“Thank you.”

“It won’t have windows.”

“I heard you about them, yes.” She looked around the chamber, noting the high walls. “We’re in the city?”

“You can hear the subway if you listen for it,” he said, curtly. “I hope you’ll get enough sleep tonight. Practice begins tomorrow.”

Now she raised an eyebrow at him. “Sorry?”

He snorted. “I have the Scarlet Witch under my roof, the woman who caused a national scandal with her powers. How could I not test them?”

It was not unpleasant to be needed, but she was at once reminded of her days as a lab experiment. In her dreams, she was worthy of respect. She should be worthy of the same in life, too. “I am not a butterfly under glass, Doctor Strange.”

“What?”

“I am not some animal on which may be experimented. I am a person.”

He was brought up short. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m so sorry, Ms. Maximoff. I’ve had a long day.”

“That’s no excuse. I’m a human being, not a curiosity.” She combed her fingers through her hair, desperately hoping to grab any bits of hay she had missed.

“I’m not good with people.” He pulled his cloak more completely around him, as if it were a safety blanket.

It was curiously vulnerable. She liked that. “I am not, either. We will have to be good to each other, I suppose.”

He nodded quickly. “Yes. My apologies. Let me show you to your room.”

She followed, feeling a little better.

***

“I will have to charge for two,” said the tentacle monster, waking Peter up. He had a deep voice but not one that was particularly accented or strange. They were very good at dealing with customers.

He extracted himself from the tentacles, his mind still hazy as he rubbed his eyes. “What?”

“Two people, not one. I hope you have enough credits?” One of his tentacles retrieved Peter’s jacket and another his pants from the floor.

“It was all me, man.” He thought of Wanda and his chest hurt.

“No. There was another. The mental presence was unmistakable. I did not know that Terrans were low-level telepaths.”

“We aren’t!” 

“No. There was a woman.”

“And my friends! My friends were there.” Yondu wasn’t a friend, but there was definitely a moment he remembered in his dream where the guy was loafing on his couch, whining about loyalty, because of course he was.”

“There was only the woman.”

“But she’s not real.” Except even as he said it, the opposite suddenly seemed so much truer. 

Wanda couldn’t have come from inside him. She was serious but kind, devoted but fully her own self. 

Years. They had spent years in the dream, together, living and fucking and being with each other every day.

Oh.

Oh my God.

“She was very real.” The tentacle monster got hold of his man bag and his banking card. “I will be extracting the exact amount her presence would cost from your account.”

“I. Okay. Wow. Oh man.” Peter sat back down on the bed. He was terrified, but happy. She was out there.

“It is not so much. I’m sure you will have plenty left over.” 

But Peter’s account did not. He only had a little left to pay for fuel to leave the station. His tank went empty around Xandar’s smallest moon. So then he had to call the rest of the Guardians to come and get him.

He sat in the dark, powered-down craft for hours. He wept. He laughed. He tried to sleep, to meet her again, to explain how ludicrous this all was, but he didn’t dream. He didn’t see her.

He embraced Gamora when she opened the bay doors. “Peter?” She sounded a little scared, which was impossible, because Gamora never got scared.

“She’s real,” he whispered. “We’re going to go meet her.”


	6. Adorable Illusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blondie “Heart of Glass”
> 
> Doctor Strange asks Wanda to read his mind. Something goes wrong.

Wanda had trouble sleeping in the large, rambling house. The Sanctum Santorum was cool, yes. The room with windows to different places around the world? The artefacts? 

She spent days exploring. She found two secret passages—candlestick, false back to a closet—and suspected there were more. The energy in the air, the excitement, and the sense of raw magic? In these ways, it was so much better than Clint’s farm.

But sleep. Oh, she missed that.

Every few hours, the traffic outside would wake her: sirens, a car horn, a screech of tires, or yelling. Or an explosion potentially caused by Doctor Strange. Once, memorably, she woke with his sentient cape floating by her door, looking, in the half dark, like a person who still thought a convincing ghost was achieved by throwing a bed sheet over one’s head.

Or the Vision. For a moment, she thought it was him, creeping into her room again.

She looked forward to dreaming once more. She would imagine Peter and return to their apartment, though she had so little luck returning to dreams once they were over.

But when she did sleep, all Wanda saw was black.

So she was sullen. Angry. 

The doctor thought she was depressed because she wasn’t allowed outside.

“You’re getting distracted,” he said during one of their training sessions. Stephen Strange levitated targets for her to hit, mostly good china that he never used, anyway. She wondered where it had come from if he hadn’t purchased it.

“I’m just a dolt, that’s all.”

“No! No. You’re not distracted in a feather-brained sort of way.” He took a breath. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“I would if there was.”

“I’m a worthy confidant, I promise.” 

“I’m sure you are.” She raised her hands and across the room, one of the plates cracked in a long, thin, red “Y.” 

“But you need to be here. Fully present.”

“I am.” She exploded another plate, this one much closer.

The pieces clipped Stephen’s face. His cape shielded him from the worst of it and he glowered. “More here, please.”

She apologized, all red, and helped him get band aids from the bathroom to cover three, shallow cuts along his jaw.

Their training sessions became better when he played music. Well, more fun for her, but he seemed more relaxed as well. He would lecture her, too, on his favorite genre—when funk developed and how he felt about its state now. Being a cranky old man inside the body of a less old man, this state always appeared to be negative.

“It isn’t the same,” he informed her tightly. “And jazz! Jazz is still jazz, yes, but it, well, it’s not, too.”

It was strange to listen to someone supposed to be her teacher and realize he sounded more like a student. “I suppose things change as you get older.”

He gave a great, withering sigh. “I’ll continue to play Miles Davis, thanks.”

Wanda missed Peter. A lot. Well, she missed the companionship that she always knew was just a shadow. 

But it was a nice shadow.

She briefly entertained the idea of seducing the doctor. He was handsome enough, though admittedly quite pale and grouchy. The idea he would be any more fun or malleable post-seduction was hard to see. 

A blond woman visited, sometimes, some sort of medical doctor or nurse or something, and though he smoothed his hair in any available reflective surface before she showed up, he spoke to her as coldly and instructively as he did to Wanda.

Still, Wanda let herself have fantasies. Crazy, confident ones. She daydreamed of telling him to restrain her during their lessons. She would swing her hips and lean over an available table, look back at him, and say that if she just couldn’t get what he was trying to teach, it must mean she needed to be punished. 

Or maybe he would be the one who might like to be tied up. The sentient cloak gave him the power to fly but he often wore it just walking around the house or disappearing through one of his portals. Maybe he liked it wrapped around him in other ways.

Wanda laughed at herself. Oh, she was a sad, ridiculous woman.

At least she was getting a little better at physical control of her powers. It had been nice to make a home at the Avengers facility with Steve, Sam, and Natasha. Even Vision, complicated as that became. None of them could provide her help with her powers the way the doctor did, studying her carefully.

It also made Wanda wonder if he thought of her much in the same way he thought of his artefacts in their glass cases. She might be something to be maintained and examined.

At least he was willing to pick up books and magazines for her. Even the kind of bread she liked, too.

She would have asked for ice cream, but it embarrassed her. More than the idea of offering to be tied up, even.

He had an agenda, of course. Why would she think he didn’t? When a powerful man goes out of his way to buy you challah, though he doesn’t have the slightest desire for it, it of course it means he wants something, and Doctor Strange revealed four weeks into her stay what it was.

“May I ask what it’s like to read people’s minds?”

They were in the study, him in the doorway without his cape. Wanda was stretched out with a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, thrilled to be reading it again after she had started it during her lone, unfinished semester in college. “It is not like reading words on a page, I will tell you this.”

“What is it like, then?” He sat in the large, cushioned chair opposite her. He flexed his fingers briefly before he steepled them.

From this angle, Wanda could see the scars there. 

She put her book and thought. “It is like diving into a series of interconnected caverns. But all the caverns are full of images and feelings, like water.”

“Like neural synapses?” His eyes were brighter, more interested than she had ever seen them when directed toward her.

Wanda knew what came next. “I’m not sure--”

“I was a brain surgeon, you see.”

“--if it would look the same--”

“You could read my mind.”

“--or how safe that would be.”

“We never know unless we try, right?” He smiled in a friendly way and chuckled.

It reminded her of Tony Stark. That faux-kindness, the obvious self-absorption. It left her feeling disgusted, guarded. “I haven’t been in another’s mind for a while.”

“Oh? Is it difficult?”

“No. It is rude.”

“Is it? If they don’t know, why would it hurt them?”

Clint had talked to her about it, specifically in regards to his time spent under Loki’s sway. “If it’s done without consent, I worry it is like rape.”

He was baffled. “How?”

“Going inside someone’s mind without their permission? Entering them where they are vulnerable?”

“Invasive, certainly.” He huffed. “You have my full consent this evening, obviously.”

“What? Right now?”

“Of course now.”

“Oh.”

“Unless you need some materials. A scrying mirror, maybe?”

“It’s just very late.”

“I have a scrying mirror if you need it.”

Wanda saw that it was unlikely he would be leaving this library without at least a promise they would be exploring his mind at some future point. “No, I do a crying mirror.”

“Is it not the right time?”

“It is a fine time.” She rubbed her temples. “Please stay still.”

He was delighted. “Will I be unconscious?”

Maybe he did like to be tied up. “That is likely.” She flexed her wrists until she could feel the energy running down her fingers, first an electric pulse, and then a real, vibrant red.

“Will you?” he asked her.

“No.” His mind was already laid open for Wanda. She could feel it.

All she did was reach over, mentally, and push. It was easy as falling into a hole--

\--where she sees him, small, pale, sitting in the kitchen with his mother, making baklava, as she instructs him carefully where to drizzle the honey, how to fold in the almonds, and he’s mother’s helper, he has to do everything right, not getting anything on his pink shirt with flowers or--

\--his first report card is all “As” and his mother--

\--looking at himself in the mirror. The bra is wrong. His chest is--

\--he buys his first car. He’s shaking with gratitude, happiness, as the car dealer gives him the keys, and, oh, fine, he’s maxing out his credit card, but isn’t it just a drop in the bucket compared to student loans? He can find the money. He was going to start his residency--

\--satin sheets. Yes, he has to get them. He would buy three sets. Blond, gorgeous, funny Christine looks so good stretched out over them. So does Mariah, Clare, Nora, Fatima, Kayti--

\--awake for three days. But another patient was waiting for him. He had to wash his hands--

\--touching his temples, now, he finds they feel like a vise is squeezing them. It’s a hangover, all right--

\--looking at the Tampax and rolling his eyes. His mother sent him the package. How could he forget. In her emails, she uses his given name, even though he explained--

\--rock climbing, his fingers finding the grooves as he hears the whir of gym equipment nearby--

\--the patient cries and it’s so uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to hear this news. He hates--

\--Christine kissing her new girlfriend goodbye in the parking lot. She looks so happy. He tries to think of something witty, something cutting, but mostly, he just feels betrayed. How could he, though? They had never been a real couple. But she likes girls and he’s--

\--he’s told that he’s the best in his field by the interviewer, who asks him prying questions. He doesn’t like people inside his personal life--

\--the car--

\--a twisty road in the night, it’s fine--

\--his hands! Not his hands! No, no, no, no--

\--Christine says, “I’ll help you shave,” and she does--

\--a patient contacts him to say, “I’m so sorry,” and Stephen, drunk, writes back, “Me too.”--

\--he has to find a cure, or what good is he--

\--the Ancient One has such kind, old eyes, but they’re afraid. He knows that fear of failure--

\--his old prom date contacts him through Facebook and sends a chat window.

Wanda can see his thoughts so clearly. 

Doctor Strange thinks his old date will ask where he’s been, why the New York Times has a photo of him in a cape. Instead, she writes, “So, what you’re saying is you weren’t really a lesbian, huh?” 

This makes Stephen roll his eyes at the screen and Peter, standing next to him in his red leather jacket, leans over his desk and says, “Exes, huh?”

Wanda gasps, outside, in the study.

The memory is no longer a memory. It’s happening.

Stephen jumps and turns, cape twisting. “Who the hell are you?”

Wanda falls inside the memory, too. It’s a sensation she’s never felt before, like her body is knitting itself into the air around her. “Peter?”

Star-Lord—her Star-Lord—looks up at her, confused. Then his eyes go puppyish and his smile widens. “There you are!” 

She runs into his arms and he sweeps her around into a hug. He kisses her and his mouth is so warm, his tongue bitter-good. Part of her mind says that’s not a good idea while she’s inside Doctor Strange’s head. The other part of her--dizzy, pleased, euphoric--is just happy to see her imaginary boyfriend again.

Her imaginary boyfriend who is running his large, gentle hand over her hip, caressing the jut of bone. Who is kissing her chin, down her neck, her shoulder. Burying his nose in her hair as he squeezes one of her breasts.

“No! No, you are done! Stop!” Doctor Strange is livid and desperately confused. “I don’t know what this is. What is this? Who is this?”

“This is Peter,” Wanda says, pulling back but not letting go. “And he shouldn’t be here. He should be inside my head.”

Peter pouts. “Babe, we got to talk about that.”

“About you being inside my head?”

“Uh-huh.” He looks embarrassed. He tries to look at Wanda but only manages to look away. Instead, he gives the doctor a brief smile, eyes crinkling. “Star-Lord. You?”

Wanda is charmed at his sweetness.

Doctor Strange is not. “Strange.” He extends his hand coldly.

“Tell me about it!” Peter waves around the room, a dark bedroom in Strange’s house. “This is crazy.”

The doctor looks ready to kill him or, in the very least, throw a tantrum. “My name is Doctor   
Stephen Strange!”

Wanda muffles her laughter. It’s mean to laugh, especially inside someone else’s mind, but oh, she can’t resist!

Peter looks him up and down, cape and all. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You don’t look like a doctor.”

Wanda shifts to hug Peter from behind. She’s able to just nestle her chin on his shoulder, but only just if she stands on her toes. “What does a doctor look like?”

Peter lights up. “Like this.”

And the room shifts around them, and they are in a white, sterile examination room. The lights are tubes of fluorescents, but the room has a warm glow. Doctor Strange is in green scrubs a surgeon’s mask that looks out-of-place. Fake. 

Peter is in pink with a smock that’s certainly tight around his chest. He grins at Wanda.

She looks down. Her paper hospital gown is noticeably skimpy, her hardening nipples pressing through the white tissue. She’s sitting on the examination table.

They’re playing doctor, she realizes. In her shock, she starts to giggle, though she knows—something in her knows—she should be embarrassed.

But Peter isn’t embarrassed. He’s shameless, really, and that lack of shame is infectious. Thrilling.

“Nurse,” she faux-husks. “I’m here for my examination.” She smiles too hard for a patient in peril.

Peter isn’t very good at pretending, either. His eyes are bright as he goes to the table. As he leans over Wanda, she leans back with a sigh. “Then we’ll have to give you a check up.”

“No. No, no, no.” Doctor Strange rips off his surgeon’s mask.

Peter’s hand creeps along her thigh as he turns and says, “What? We haven’t seen each other in a while.” He looks genuinely concerned as his fingers ghost between her legs.

Wanda shudders. There’s something about Peter moving forward as he chats with Doctor Strange, something about his fingers on her clit as he half-ignores her, that makes her moan.

Doctor Strange’s face is red, from perfect cheekbones to ears. “I’m right here!”

Wanda smirks. “I do not mind if you watch, but you can leave, if you like.”

He doesn’t care. “It’s my mind! This is like getting it on inside my bedroom!”

And the room shifts again. The cold, hardness of the examination table gives under her back and she’s in a large, white bed with, yes, silk sheets.

Instead of paper, she wears a red negligee. It has a heart over each breast and lace over the nipples.

Peter is in black boxers, small enough to leave nothing to the imagination. She can’t mistake the hardness of his cock.

Doctor Strange doesn’t wear boxers. He has on his cape, yes, but he also wears a belt of a sort.

Oh.

A strap-on. The dildo with it is blue.

The redness from his ears extends down to his chest. “Absolutely not!” He unbuckles the belt immediately, angrily.

“I am sorry,” she informs the doctor airily, not feeling very apologetic at all as Peter continues to play with her, “but Peter is right and—ah—we have not seen each other in some time!” She wraps her arms around his head and brings him in for a kiss.

She can feel his hardness against her. Oh, God, she wants him. She’s been wanting him. She’s been so lonely. He even smells the same.

Peter’s tongue is slick. He kisses her messily. Unfocused. He turns back to Doctor Strange. “I mean, man, if you wanted to join in, you could?” He looks over at Wanda for consent.

She nods, feeling flushed and breathless. Pleased. The idea of both of them devouring her while she lays between them, yes, and their fingers probing her, pushing inside of her.

Or maybe they would roll on top of each other to kiss. Fuck. And she could watch.

She feels the room begin to shift with the force of her own desire.

Doctor Strange, in a fury, hurls the strap-on across the room. It hits Peter in the face and then falls on top of Wanda’s chest.

“Enough of this!” He stands, naked, dark curls between his legs, before his cape sweeps around him. When he pulls it back, he’s wearing his robes. “Wanda, get out of my mind, now!”

“You’re real, too?” Peter chokes. He stares at Wanda, a realization widening his eyes. “Wait! You can project into other peoples’ minds! So what’s happening is you’re--”

The rest of what he says slips away just as she does. She sinks into the bed, negligee and all, the mattress becoming a great, yawning black hole. Peter’s concerned brow is above her. Then his head shrinks to a pinpoint and then nothing.

It terrifies her.

She wakes up—

\--no. She woke up in Doctor Strange’s library.

Wanda pushed out of the haze, frustrated and sweating.

Doctor Strange was in his chair, gripping each armrest tightly. He was sweating, too.

Oh. Oh Christ. Wanda felt sick. When she reached for words, all she found was the taste of bile thick in her mouth. She had to swallow to keep it down. “I. I--”

“Can you please explain what just happened?” His tone was even.

“I haven’t had much practice, and, um.”

“Is that what you think about?”

“No! I mean, it’s a dream. Was a dream. Yes.”

“It was my mind! What were you doing? What were you doing with him?” He took a great breath. His anger was chill. “Don’t answer that.”

She stood. Her legs shook as she did, but she managed. She sprinted toward the door. Yes, not answering things sounded just fine with her. Explaining her perversions? No. She couldn’t do that, nor could she describe what she had tried to explain, the discovery and violation of probing a mind.

She could not explain the drug-like euphoria.

The shame hung close. Not only because of her mindless desire, but the power that coursed through her. It always led to her to messing up, whether it was setting the Hulk loose on a city or blasting the floor of a building with Wakandans inside it. Children.

Wanda ran down the grand staircase. The front door, when she reached it, opened with ease. Barely a push.

Doctor Strange was now after her. She could hear his footsteps. He called out for her.

She ran out the door. Just a moment of air, she thought as she heard the sounds of traffic. She ran past joggers, a woman with a baby carriage, and a lady in a fur coat.

She would come back, she told herself.

One of the nice things about Peter was that he lifted the shame from her. He was warm, funny, maybe a bit dim in some ways, and so forgiving of her. He was also non-existent, a pretend friend when she was too old for one.

On the second block, she realized a car was following her. It wasn’t a black sedan, or anything. Just a boring, cream-colored car with a man inside who had sunglasses, a moustache, and a Hawaiian shirt.

When he waved her down with a smile, she realized he was a tourist. Probably asking her for directions. He rolled down the window. 

Out of a sense of politeness, she stopped. “I haven’t been out in the city.” She saw that the rest of the windows in the car were tinted.

“Neither have I, Ms. Maximoff,” he said. The doors to the car opened and three men in ballistic vests and SWAT helmets fell out. It was like an awful clown car but with government agents.

Fuck. They had been waiting. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Leaving the Sanctum Santorum had been the worst mistake.

They surrounded her quickly, immediately.

She raised her arms, and with a grunt and heave of muscle, she mentally ripped out a section of sidewalk. It was difficult, but she brought it in front of her like a granite shield. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Then don’t.” One of the men leapt at her.

She threw the block of sidewalk at him.

When the fake tourist leapt at her, she knocked him back with her shield.

Three men at once, though? She couldn’t track them all, much less block the fourth man when he came running down the sidewalk.

She recognized he had a hypodermic needle in his hand only when the sharp end pushed into her neck.

Wanda panicked and threw all three men off of her at once, not thinking where they would land, if one might crack his skull. 

Her heart thundered.

The world tilted and she tilted with it. She saw the man with the Hawaiian shirt stand over her, blood dripping down his brow.

Now that she looked at him properly, he looked an awful lot like Secretary Ross, but softer. His moustache extended across his mouth as he smiled down at her.

She didn’t fall into the blackness the way she had in her dream. No, this was no graceful fall. This was an abrupt cut in the connection, like a television being unplugged.

***

Peter woke and ran down the ship, hollering. “I found her again! It was her!”

Rocket had been impressed by the whole telepathic thing at first. Now he just thought Peter needed to focus on their mission again, weird-ass mental shit be damned. “And you said, ‘I’m real, let’s meet on Terra,’ right?”

“I’m working up to it. It’s hard to concentrate” He stopped. Outside the windows, they were passing through the asteroid belt. He vaguely remembered it was near Jupiter. Oh wow.

“Right.”

“What’s the rush?” Peter shrugged. “I’ll find her soon, anyway.”

“Coward.”

“Just working up the nerve.” He patted the box with the Infinity Stone in it. “How many hours until landing?”

“Thirty-six, maybe?”

“God damn. That’s forever.”

One of the scanners began to beep. Rocket chuckled. “That looks like another ship, out there. Guess we don’t have to wait that long.”

“A Terran ship?” Peter was hoping the technology had advanced, but hadn’t expected it that quickly. This was pretty neat.

“I think they’re hailing us.”

“Comm screen, on,” said Peter.

Rocket snorted. “No shit, idiot. There’s only audio, though.” He flipped a switch.

“Where is Gamora?” 

Thanos’ voice rumbled right through the comm link and up Peter’s spine. 

“Put my daughter on,” he said, softly.

Rocket flicked the comm link off again. 

Peter squawked. “How did he find us?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Rocket didn’t bother to yell. “We’re going hyper jumping. We’re ditching this right the fuck now. Hold on.”

Before they leapt forward, Peter grabbed the mic to tell Gamora and Drax and Groot to hold on to something, too. The asteroids that parted to reveal the giant aster floating in front of them, of course, likely tipped them off.

The engine went hot and Peter forgot to grab onto something, himself.

His forehead bashed into the control panel. When it made contact, his vision went white. He heard Rocket shout and was jarred backward. Then he saw the crescent of blood along the buttons and the smashed screen and blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hey, Wandering_Swain, why does Doctor Strange happen to be trans?"
> 
> Because people in real life happen to be trans.
> 
> Please let me know if you spot mistakes, both grammatical and representational.


End file.
